For those who have not noticed a new rival to SE23.COM sprang up over the weekend: foresthillforum.co.uk. They appear to have some start up problems and I have my reservations about the hoster they have chosen. It will be interesting to see if they can make any impression on the incumbent. You may recall they are not the first to try.

I see 'Snazy' (who identifies himself as Michael Snasdell), a frequent poster on the SE23 forum, is a (the?) moderator on the new forum. There is also a post from 'Michael' about the Forest Hill Society stall at the farmers' market - another old friend, I suspect.

I think Snazy is assisting with some of the spam issues.
Perhaps I should have registered as 'Robin Orton'. I hope nobody takes that name before I can register it. Imagine the fun I could have posting.

Certainly the forum appears to be a lot less regulated than it was. Part of this may be the admin taking note of the other forum, and part may be that there's a lot less chat on his forum than there used to be.

I suspect a lot of people have moved to Facebook and the various groups there: "se23 mums" has over 2000 users now and at least one other local online community has been set up.

Personally I like a forum with things arranged along topic lines. But you do need to come and actively seek things out rather than just have them appear in the Facebook news feed.

I've been quite active over on the new forum SE23.life and I have to say I like it very much. It's been set up with a deliberately positive outlook, the two main admins come from opposite ends of the political spectrum and hope to keep the site balanced, friendly and community focused. Members are actively encouraged to participate in developing the forum as it grows.

One thing I like is that users can get 'verified' status by being endorsed in real life, either by meeting one of the admins / moderators, or popping into Sugar Mountain sweet shop and identifying themselves. There's a good feeling of local community already, and I think people's behaviour online will be much better when they have a sense of the real person behind the user name.

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread but I’ve just had a very bizarre experience with SE23.com. I’ve been a member for years but rarely post. I recently noticed that the Forest Hill Safer Neighbourhood Team from the police were giving regular updates. The username was of Sgt Biddle with his picture on the profile. What a fantastic idea I thought, but then I noticed that people were asking questions and Sgt Biddle was outright ignoring them: only posting “updates” but not otherwise engaging. I felt this was odd because I know Sgt Biddle and know that he pioneered social media use in the Met and is very proactive in engaging with people on the internet. I therefore contacted him and asked why he was ignoring repeat questions on the thread.

Sgt Biddle told me that he had never heard of SE23.com and had never had an account there. He said he uses SE23.life. I then had a look at that website and it appears that all of the updates from a thread on there were just being copied and pasted over to SE23.com. He soon put an update on SE23.life mentioning that he doesn’t use the other site.

I pointed this out on SE23.com to reassure the people that had asked repeated questions (as it reflected badly on the local police as it looked like they were ignoring concerns and questions) and my post was promptly deleted. As was another post pointing out the same thing.

I now appear to be banned/suspended. I have had no communication from whoever runs the site despite two emails (admittedly both sent this afternoon) querying what has happened.

It’s just not on. It’s very unfair on Sgt Biddle. And possibly also illegal to impersonate a police officer!

I’m very surprised that the Admin of SE23.com has not taken the thread down. I am not alone in assuming it is the Admin who is runnng the fake account (which is why posts pointing out it is fake have been removed).

He is also most likely to be the sock puppet Hillview, who does nothing but repost newsworthy items from SE23.life.

Yup, I seem to be permanently banned as well. Mind, if "the official" SE23 site is cutting and pasting police posts from one site to another are they breaking the law? It feels like they are giving the appearance of the Safer Neighbourhood Team posting on that site when they are not.
Mind the reading community of "official SE23.com" is rather low.....